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Val
Val is an antagonist in Outlast 2. She is the leader of a splinter group from the Testament of the New Ezekiel, called the Heretics. Background The outskirts of Temple Gate are littered with notes written through the perspective of Val telling her gradual rift in views between herself and Sullivan Knoth. Val started out as the chief deacon of Knoth. Initially, Val was the foster parent of Temple Gate's ill children whom she sympathized with in her journals. Knoth forces her to kill countless of them for pragmatic reasons, however. She begins to have vivid nocturnal emissions of the Testament's monstrous bloodshed, writing "Our sins find us in our dreams. But my dreams are nothing but the murder of my children. And I wake laughing, and aroused, and often wet with the involuntary lust of sleep. I woke this morning thinking I was wetted with the blood of a child's slit throat. But it was wetness of my own making." These emissions make her question the beliefs of the cult. She says "I feel increasingly this is a message. But nothing holy." Val then digs a tunnel in a remote area on the outskirts of town where she meets up with Testament followers like her who wish to discuss their dreams. These eventually inspire Val to split off from the Testament and form the Heretics, aiming to assist ''the birth of the Anti-Christ rather than prevent it like the Testament, due to her love for the chaos and death the Anti-Christ and its apocalypse would bring. In her journals it is said Val is like a membrane awaiting penetration; she wants the voice of whomever she is hearing to consume them. Val and the Heretics adopted a new lifestyle and took shelter within a tunnel system in the mines. Story Val and the Heretics are first seen after Blake and Lynn Langermann escape from the Testament. The Heretics recapture Lynn, whose womb is rumored to house the Anti-Christ, and set up a ritual down in their mines to stage her birth. Blake follows, constantly hunted by the feral Heretics, and is eventually captured and taken to Val, whose shown a lustful, predatory obsession with him. Val shows him her "true face" by smothering her naked body in mud and donning a crown of thorns, distorting her appearance. A sudden tremor gives Blake a chance to escape, however, and Val chases him throughout the mines with a torch in hand. Blake finally stumbles across the ritual where Lynn is kept, surrounded by the entire Heretic cult participating in a blood orgy that Val forces him to participate in, raping him. The Testament, ratted out hours earlier by Josiah, raid the mines, however, and presumably kill every last Heretic around including Val, ending and winning their civil war. Personality Val is a proudly psychotic and perverse sexual predator whose life mission is to assist in the birth of the Anti-Christ to revel in its bloody, apocalyptic rampage. Val boasts about her wet-dreams of her infant children being gruesomely murdered, and also sexually preys upon Blake every chance she gets, at one point raping him. Val also lecherously licks Lynn's body after choking her out, making it very likely she doesn't see gender. Val sees her own monstrous actions as "the sharing of love", and refers to her underlings as "my loves". Val is lascivious and never tries to hide it. Val also violently abhors Knoth and the Testament's views, and (very hypocritically) insults him for being a rapist and child-killer, although she doesn't see it as hatred, more so an embarrassment to God and what inspired her to make the Heretics. Val wants to consummate her relationships with the voice that she hears. She notes that the voice is not god but something physical like her but she desire it more than anything. The voice that Val hears is the radio frequency. The fact that Val starts hearing something different than Knoth may also show different reactions to the frequencies. Physical description Val is a slim, well-groomed, androgynous-looking trans woman with short blonde hair and icy blue eyes. In her first appearance, she wears a black priest uniform similar to Knoth's with a cross necklace and black boots, although for the rest of game, she is completely naked and instead smeared from head to toe in mud like the rest of the Heretics, with a crown of thorns and branches. Trivia *Val's gender has been subject to much debate. While she appears to have the body of a woman, as seen in the mines when she's completely nude, her appearance is remarkably androgynous, Knoth gives her masculine pronouns, and when asked about the confusion, Red Barrels responded with "Val is Val", implying it's meant to be ambiguous."Val is Val" Twitter Post This can be taken with a grain of salt, however, as Red Barrels tend not to treat Twitter questions seriously, such as simply calling Marta "real tall" when asked of her height.Marta's height "confirmation" However, analysis of Val's nude model reveals her vagina and breasts might simply be shaped with mud, as the placement of her sex organs are scientifically inaccurate and very close inspection reveals a small, mutilated penis shape hidden under the layers of mud. This might act as proof that Val is male-to-female transsexual. *While Val's fate is left ambiguous, one of Blake's unused audio logs suggests that she would have had a death scene at some point in the game. This is further backed up by a number of unused audio logs found within the game's files. In them, Val can be heard saying ''"Strange... Pale fruit. You're going... to love me. I have... so much... pleasure to share with you," (likely referring to Marta's appearance) followed by her repeatedly chanting "Papa always loved me best", interrupted by choking and death rattles. Val's unused voice lines Cross-referencing them with Marta's unused lines imply that Val's death scene would've had her wrestling with Marta in the raid of the mines, attempting to rape and insult her, with Marta overpowering her Heretic rival and strangling her to death.Marta's unused voice lines References Navigation es:Val fr:Val ru:Вэл Category:Characters Category:Outlast 2 characters